1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates broadly to computer software that executes on a web server platform. More particularly, this invention relates to computer software that executes on a web server platform and enables web-based users to collaborate in the evaluation of product features.
2. State of the Art
Buyers considering the acquisition of complex technology products, such as computer systems or automobiles, sometimes face difficult choices. Such products typically have an extensive and diverse set of functional capabilities, which customers try to match with their specific requirements. It can be challenging for buyers to weigh the functional tradeoffs between a set of similar products in order to make a choice that best meets their needs. In particular, it can be difficult to obtain accurate information about the true functional capabilities of products that are being evaluated. Product suppliers tend to highlight their strongest features in marketing information, while they may obscure information about weaker features. Customers who are already using a product have an un-biased understanding of how well it works, and thus are in a position to provide the most accurate information about the quality of product features.
Global networks such as the World Wide Web (WWW or common referred to the “web”) potentially provide a means to connect directly with users who are willing to share information about their experiences with products. Indeed, web sites such as epinions.com and bizrate.com allow users to submit ratings for a broad range of products. However, these sites only allow users to assign ratings at a relatively high level. Users can provide an overall grade for a product, and typically only two to five detail grades addressing specific product characteristics. While these web-based product evaluation systems may be sufficient for relatively simple products, they are not suitable for more complex products with more extensive feature sets. More particularly, different users have different requirements and thus have different views of a products' value. The high level ratings captured by such systems do not allow users to rate and/or comment on specific product features and thus fail to provide information that is particularly relevant to the specific requirements for different users.
Web-based product evaluation systems have been proposed that enable the quality of products or services to be graded at multiple levels of detail. For example, see U.S. Pat. No. 6,236,990 to Geller et al. These systems organize complex feature sets hierarchically to reflect the structure of a product or service. Users can assign weights to the different levels of the hierarchy to reflect the importance of a particular function to their requirements. These weights are then used to arrive at composite scores for products. However, these systems do not necessarily take advantage of the knowledge of product users. Rather, ratings are given to individual product features from experts who are employed by system managers. As a result, the evaluation process is somewhat labor intensive. The more complex a product is, the more parts it can be decomposed into, and the more expert resources are required to maintain the ratings in each of the functional areas. Further, the experts may not have sufficient data for a particular product feature to be able to form an accurate rating.